Your inbox is not your to do list

Watching a number of colleagues and friends deal with email recently, I found out that a lot of people still use their inbox as a kind of to-do list. Whenever an email comes in, they take it as yet another task.

There are a couple of problems with this. Most have been described at length in several posts, such as the Inbox Zero articles by Merlin Mann at 43Folders. You may want to read some of his excellent articles, which align with most of the ideas in David Allen’s GTD methodology.

What really gets to me in using your inbox as a to do list is that you actually allow others to determine what is the most important thing you will be doing. That comes down to giving control over your activities to other people.

In essence, using your inbox as a to do list comes down to saying yes to everything that anyone cares to send to you. Even if you just consider it, you are still considering it at not the time of your choosing, but the time they impose on you.

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Published by Ben Broeckx

Professor and academic director internal audit at Antwerp Management School - Writing about leadership, management and governance - Interested in any system that can be explored, analyzed and deconstructed. By day also Director Public Benefits & Public Affairs at Sodexo Benefits & Rewards Services Belgium.
View all posts by Ben Broeckx